SF’s E-Scooter Complaints Have More Than Doubled. The City Moves to Extend Lime, Spin Permits Anyway

Complaints about scooters in San Francisco more than doubled last year, with residents primarily frustrated by haphazardly parked e-scooters blocking sidewalks and driveways, even as the popularity of the electric vehicles continues to grow.

Amid these two competing trends, city transit officials on Tuesday paved the way to extend operating permits for two scooter share companies for up to two more years.

The city’s Powered Scooter Share Permit Program currently allows the companies Lime and Spin, both headquartered in San Francisco, to operate fleets of no more than 3,250 scooters each.

With those permits previously set to expire on June 30, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) Board of Directors voted unanimously to authorize an extension of the permits up to June 2028, without having the companies formally reapply. Lime and Spin have both operated in the city since 2019 and had fleets of roughly 2,600 and 2,100 scooters on average in 2025, respectively.

Ridership on Lime more than doubled between 2024 and 2025, said Monica DiLullo, a spokesperson at Lime. But, according to a KQED analysis of data from the city’s 311 Customer Service center, so too have complaints about illegally parked e-scooters and unsafe riding, which rose from over 5,000 to more than 11,000 during the same time frame.

“More activity commensurate with that rise does make sense,” DiLullo said of the 311 complaints. SFMTA data shows Lime logged over 260,000 trips in October 2025, the highest recorded for the scooter share program. “As we continue to grow, we always want to do better, and we’ll keep working on improving service for riders and non-riders alike.”

Spin did not respond to requests for comment.

Kate Torin, SFMTA’s Director of the Taxis, Access & Mobility Services Division, said the rise in complaints could be attributed to several factors, including changes made to the 311 reporting process, as well as confusion by members of the public as to what is or isn’t a scooter.

“ There are a whole lot of new e-device types, and people may be referring to those as scooters. It could be a reflection of the growing micromobility category and the looseness with which we use the term ‘scooter’ to define a range of micromobility types,” Torin said.

Some neighborhoods, however, feel the pain of improperly parked scooters more than others, with the majority of 311 complaints originating in the city’s North Beach neighborhood.

“It’s scooter-geddon down here,” said former San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who lives in North Beach and is the treasurer of the North Beach Business Association.

Peskin singled out Lime specifically, accusing the company of routinely redistributing scooters in the middle of sidewalks or blocking ADA-accessible ramps. Spin, he said, generally tethers scooters to a bicycle rack or a pole at the edge of a sidewalk.

“ It is an ADA lawsuit waiting to happen because of out-of-control behavior by a city-permitted, for-profit organization that is thumbing their nose at the city,” Peskin said. “ They should put these companies on a short leash and hold them accountable.”

DiLullo said photos shared by Peskin of improperly parked scooters were “rider misparked vehicles.” She noted the company only deploys vehicles to bike racks and strictly adheres to city requirements, which allow workers to park two scooters per rack.

DiLullo said Lime employs foot patrol teams who actively work to fix misparked vehicles. She added that the company is launching a new campaign later this week, called “Parking Wardens,” which discourages sidewalk riding and bad parking by offering discounts to riders who follow the rules, among other incentives.

“Anyone with complaints about vehicles in the wrong locations should come directly to Lime, and we will get right on fixing the problem,” DiLullo said.

By providing the option to travel by a small, electric motorized scooter instead of a private car, the SFMTA cites shared scooters as a way to improve public health and safety and to reduce traffic. And for street safety advocates like Robin Pam, San Francisco director at Streets For All, the program is an important tool for the city to meet its transit goals.

If there are issues with parking, Pam said the city should build scooter parking corrals in existing no-parking zones, such as those made available by the state’s recent daylighting law.

“We can clear sidewalks and improve intersection safety at the same time by turning these daylighting spaces into organized parking for bikes and scooters,” Pam said.

Instead of making the companies reapply for permits, SFMTA staff said extending the term of the permits would make more efficient use of limited staff resources, and any changes to the program would be minimal.

Under its permit rules, the SFMTA may cite scooter share companies for improperly parked scooters and other violations. The agency may also waive fines if the companies consistently address parking-related violations quickly. According to an SFMTA dashboard, since Dec. 31, 2023, the agency has handed out 16,950 parking citations to Lime and 7,150 to Spin, but both companies are considered to be in good standing.

”Now that the program is mature, we thought this was a good time to request the permit term extension so we can focus on some of the larger micromobility issues,” Torin said, citing demand for the SFMTA to weigh in on “various e-bikes, e-motos, one-wheel devices and everything in between.”

Torin said the agency meets with Lime and Spin regularly to share issues, and it can restrict parking in certain areas as the need arises. The SFMTA updated parking restrictions for the program as recently as September 2025, prohibiting riders from parking scooters at the city’s Fisherman’s Wharf and other areas.

Torin said that while the SFMTA does not have jurisdiction to regulate private scooters or other micromobility modes, the scooter share program allows the SFMTA to hold Lime and Spin accountable.

“We do want to emphasize that having a regulated service that fills that transportation need is something that we find important and want to focus on,” Torin said.